Sexual Complementarity Study

Do You Both Have To Have The Same Fetishes?

A new study shows that when it comes to what goes down between partners behind closed doors, thinking alike doesn’t necessarily mean great sex.

The study, conducted by a team of psychologists at the University of Rochester, is the first ever to poke and prod at the notion of sexual complementarity, meaning when two partners’ sexual preferences don’t necessarily align, but complement each other nevertheless.

Researchers surveyed 34 heterosexual couples of varying degrees of commitment and asked each participating individual about their own sexual preferences, what their partner enjoyed, and what they believed their partner believed them to enjoy, as well as their overall level of sexual satisfaction. Once the ballots were in, researchers compared results between partners and deemed the pairing as either complementary or similar in their turn-on tastes. The team found that complementary couples reported to be more sexually satisfied than their similar counterparts, which, when you really think about it, makes a lot of sense.

The researchers broke their results down to a “Jack and Jill” situation to clarify their findings for those of us who haven’t had their morning coffee yet: “Imagine that Jack enjoys giving oral sex… and that Jill enjoys receiving oral sex… Their preferences are not similar, but they complement each other’s in ways that their idiosyncratic desires can be met.” The same sort of thing could be said about couples who get down with a little S&M action from time to time — with two dominant personalities in the bedroom, the whole thing just wouldn’t be as fun.

The report came across another finding that anyone getting it on should keep in mind — women with partners who know what they want in bed (and ideally, how to do it right) reported to be far happier with their sex life than those bedding less informed gentlemen. However, researchers saw no trends when it came to the male side of the equation — a guy hooking up with a lady who knows exactly what he wants didn’t prove to be any luckier than one who got down with a woman who just dove in and did her thing. Either way, a little sexual communication never hurt anybody.